)
)
The Transformative Power of Non-Transactional Partnerships
The transformative power of non-transactional partnerships: How a trust-based alliance in Zimbabwe built a locally-led humanitarian financing mechanism - and what can be learned from that experience.
In 2023, in the aftermath of a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, nine international NGOs in Zimbabwe chose coordination over competition. Ther was no shared funding, no formal mandate, and no donor instruction -- only a working agreement to stop duplicating and coordinate more effectively the scarce resources available. Three years later, the Zimbabwe Alliance for Humanitarian Action (ZAHA) has delivered joint assessments, convened Zimbabwe's Localisation Summit, been formally co-opted into OCHA's Inter-Sector Coordination Group, and is now launching a locally-led pooled financing mechanism with a 72-96 hour alert-to-disbursement target and direct local access built in from day one. This session tells that story -- including the trade-offs, the friction, and the specific donor behaviours that made it possible. The sequence matters: trust was built before money moved.
What the Audience Takes Away:
- What it takes to move from coordination to shared financing, and how.
- The concrete trade-offs in designing direct local access into a pooled fund: speed against assurance, breadth against agility, local ownership against fiduciary comfort.
- What a non-transactional donor-partner relationship looks like in practice, and what it asks of donors who want to honour localisation commitments in their own strategies.
- An honest account of what has been difficult, and what the partners would do differently.
)
){kind=logo}
)
){kind=logo}
)
)
)